LJ Star Expands Capacity Designed to Accelerate Supply Chain Deliveries
Twinsburg, Ohio – August 9, 2022 – LJ Star Inc., (www.ljstar.com), the leading provider of process observation equipment, announces a major facilities expansion to its headquarters in Twinsburg, Ohio. The recently completed construction project doubled its warehouse and manufacturing space and increased office space by 50 percent.
LJ Star expands due to steadily increasing demand for its products and services, which has led to LJ Star realizing, on average, more than a 13% annual growth rate (AGR) during the past several years. The company has added new personnel to help manage its business growth. The increased space, particularly the warehouse storage and handling capacity, will enable LJ Star to fulfill parts and product orders from stock, providing immediate delivery for many of its products.
“We made a significant investment to increase our square footage with a particular focus on warehouse capacity,” said Ted Mielnik, President of LJ Star Inc. “This allows us to maintain larger inventory levels for on-time delivery and order fulfillment. Global supply chain issues are causing increasing concern for companies of all types and sizes. Domestic availability of critical parts and shortened lead times should help our customers meet their business goals and objectives and retain a valuable competitive edge.”
The expansion is tied to the strong market conditions in the sectors targeted by LJ Star, including pharmaceuticals, food/beverage, chemical, and oil & gas, for demanding process applications that require the highly engineered solutions LJ Star offers. As those industries expanded their own capacities aggressively during the pandemic, LJ Star has seen a corresponding demand for its sight glasses, sight flow indicators and process lights. This enables LJ Star to keep pace supplying essential parts for new production lines and facilities its customers have built, particularly during the pandemic expansion era.
This is part of a company-wide investment policy to improve products and services at its Ohio location as well as at its sister company Tank Components Inc. in Missouri. In the past few years Tank Components has added capital improvements including plate rolls for the Cylinder Department, an HD Plasma Table for the Tank Head Department and a CNC Turning Center for the Machine Shop, to name a few.
About LJ Star
LJ Star Incorporated (www.ljstar.com) provides an extensive line of process observation equipment – sight glasses, process lighting, sanitary fittings, and level gage instrumentation. Product lines include METAGLAS® Safety Windows, Lumiglas® Explosion Proof Lights and Cameras, the MetaClamp® Sanitary Sight Window, Visual Flow Indicators, Sight Ports, Sanitary Clamps, Magnetic Level Gages and Gage Glass. METAGLAS® is the #1 selling fused sight glass, proven in thousands of installations around the world. Unlike some other sight glasses, it meets stringent DIN 7079 and DIN 7080 quality standards, and it is approved for USP Type I use.
T&C Stainless achieves all 3 with the help of LJ Star and TCI
Exceptional quality, industry-leading service and solutions, and world-class products. For more than 20 years, vessel maker and LJ Star customer T&C Stainless has delivered quality and innovation to the Biotech & Pharmaceutical industries.
They have grown from a garage-based business to an internationally recognized world leader by working with integrity and focusing on three main tenants – Quality, Pricing and Delivery. They work with each customer to set clear and achievable goals for all three, then work internally with their team of ASME Engineers and manufacturing specialists to deliver on those goals.
Also key to this process? Vendors that work the same way, with the same goals in mind. In LJ Star and its subsidiary Tank Components Inc. (TCI), T&C has found not just such a vendor but a true partner.
Quality
Saying you have quality components is all well and good, but with LJ Star and TCI, T&C has partners that can prove it. By using top-of-the-line materials in its ferrules, tank heads, manways, process lighting, sight glasses, clamps and more, and providing the traceable paperwork to prove standards compliance, T&C can meet and exceed the rigorous standards their customers require.
Pricing
T&C and TCI have partnered since T&C was founded, and LJ Star has worked with T&C since acquiring TCI. Together, the three companies have a well-established relationship that allows them to bring the maximum value to each project, ensuring that customers get additional value and superior quality. As much as price, T&C looks to add value to its products, and the LJ Star/TCI partnership has delivered that.
Delivery
Of course, a valuable, well-made vessel does a company no good if it’s held up because of supply issues. Here too, the partnership between the three companies has paid dividends. By being up-front, honest and setting clear expectations, the companies can work together to innovate and deliver the right solution to each issue and the best products for the end customer.
Learn more about this partnership and the gains it has brought to T&C Stainless in this Case Study.
Never Miss a Show Again – LJ Star Launches Interactive Virtual Trade Show Exhibit
Thinking about going to Pack Expo or Interphex but don’t have the time or travel budget? Still want to find out what’s new, or ask questions about new LJ Star technology?
There’s no substitute for face-to-face conversation, of course, but if that’s not possible LJ Star has created the next best thing – its new Virtual Trade Show Exhibit!
Twinsburg, OH – January 26, 2021 – LJ Star (www.ljstar.com) announces that its patent-pending Clamp Type Sterile Visual Flow Indicator, or CT-SVFI, was awarded one of Processing Magazine’s 2020 Breakthrough Products Awards.
Processing’s annual Breakthrough Products Awards showcase innovate technologies that improve operations in the processing industry. Each year the magazine selects the 10 most significant product developments in the industry, recognized for helping end users better manage tough processing environments, achieve regulatory compliance, reduce unplanned downtime and drive overall profitability.
As part of the company’s vision for the future, executives recognized that LJ Star had markedly changed from its historical beginnings in the market. LJ Star began in 1991 as a single-product distributor and has expanded its portfolio to become a multi-solution manufacturer of its own products, requiring that it change how it was positioned.
Vote for LumiFlo®!
We’re so excited to announce that the LumiFlo® LED light has been nominated for a 2019 Flow Control Innovation Award.
The LumiFlo® LED Light is a first-to-market, exclusive patent pending LJ Star product that is designed to improve the lighting of full view sight flow indicators in process fluid lines. It easily attaches to most inline full view sight flow indicators in process fluid lines, allowing operators to clearly see color, flow and particles moving through the sight glass in order to visually inspect product quality, clarity, viscosity and consistency.
Aarash Navabi, CPIP, Director of Research + Development, Research Dynamics, Massachusetts Division of L.J. Star, participates on several critical ASME Bioprocessing Equipment (BPE) Committees, the Surface Finish Subcommittee, the Polymers Subcommittee and is leading another Task Group for BPE. At meetings held in San Diego, California in May 2018, Aarash reported on a variety of committee discussions and decisions that drive the processing industry.
Michael Bosley, one of L.J. Star’s Product Support Specialists, took part in ASME Bioprocessing Equipment (BPE) Committee Meetings, held May 7-10, 2018, in San Diego, California. As a leading supplier to the biotechnology industry, we take our responsibility to participate in advancing the industry very seriously. By participating in the work of these committees, we hope to stay on the leading edge of evolving technologies; at the same time, we want to share updates on the topics these committees are weighing with you, so you can stay up to date on industry trends.